Tolkien

I'm a sucker for craft. It may be some form of heavily disguised procrastination activity but I love reading about how some of my favourite novels were put together: what changes occurred to the manuscript and what real life incidents inspired them. Because writing isn't disconnected from the real world. Real life bleeds into writing [...]

In my own mind, if Fantasy authors were arranged into one massive over-simplified family tree, it would feature two great dynasties: Tolkien and Peake. Under Tolkien, people like Eddings and Donaldson, under Peake, writers like Clive Barker, China Mieville, maybe even a dash of Neil Gaiman, with people like Lovecraft a distant uncle or second [...]